“What are we going on?” he said. “We are not such fools as to think we can prevail now.… I saw Dumbarton’s Scots yonder on Sedgemoor.… I know how they can fight … they were under me at Bothwell Brig.…” He pressed his handkerchief to his lips and he was trembling like a sick maid. They saw in his eyes that he considered them, as the play saith, on “the edge of doom,” and as he had given them leave for ignoble thoughts, so each took advantage of it and bethought him of his own sad condition. “We have but a rabble,” said one. “And there is yet a chance to get over seas—” “I cannot fall into the hands of James Stewart,” muttered Monmouth; “for I have done that which cannot be forgiven.” And there was such pusillanimous fear in his wretched look of shivered dread that it passed like a panic through all that they too had done what could not be forgiven; nor was James Stewart a merciful man. One voiced the general terror: “We could get to the coast before any guessed we had left Bridgewater–in flight lies our only chance.” Then my lord Grey made this speech. “There are six thousand people have left their homes to follow you–would you, my lord, abandon them to that fate ye cannot face yourself?” Monmouth looked at him; maybe he thought it strange that the man that had been a proved coward under fire should speak so intrepidly in the council, yet he was too unnerved for a retort or an answer. “Oh, you,” added Lord Grey, with a flick of a scorn in his tone, “who took the title of a King, and are a King’s son, cannot you make a more seemly show of it than this?” “It is my life,” said the Duke in a piteous agitation. “Five thousand pounds on my head … to die as Russell did.…” “You are a King’s son,” repeated Lord Grey. In a desperate passion his Grace answered him. “Why did you induce me to this folly? It was you, that villain Ferguson and Argyll—” “He has paid,” said the other quickly. “As I must pay.… My God, was I not happy in Brabant? You but wanted my name to gild your desperation—” “We would have made you King,” said Lord Grey, and he smiled a little. There fell a silence, and it seemed that the Duke would speak, but he said no words. “Come, gentlemen,” spoke out my lord Grey. “The Council is over–you will have your orders before morning–all expedients are ineffectual; now each, in his own way, must go forward to the end.” He took up the candle to light them from the room, and they, being men of a little station, were overawed by his quality and went; two of them deserted that night, and one betrayed us by firing a pistol to warn Lord Feversham of our approach and so got the King’s pardon. God be merciful to the others; I think they died unknown and brave. I, being trusted because there was a price on my head and I had borne the torture in Scotland, was asked by Lord Grey to stay and help hearten his Grace.